Doing It Marginally Well Since 2005

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A Small World

In general, I think of the Internet as a very scary space. There is so much alarming commentary, so many pot stirrers and such a huge amount of Weird, that I choose to just always read the same blogs and visit the same websites in order to avoid any online dark corners. I mean, have you ever actually read the comments on a YouTube video or a People.com article or anything ever written in the entire history of Huffington Post? Internet commenters can be… full of conviction. And, questionable grammatical choices. Also, when did everyone get so crazy?

To write honestly on this site about my life, my marriage and my children, I have to visualize that none of those scary Internet people are reading. In fact, I like to pretend that there are only about five people in total that ever read anything I post. Since two of those five are guaranteed to be my mother and my father, mentally, I can trudge on. I convince myself that only those I know visit here. I like to think of it as writing with blinders on.

Imagine my surprise then, when I discovered someone else was reading and she was neither crazy nor related to me.

Back in November, I wrote about discovering a charming set of children’s books by Sara O’Leary entitled, “The Henry Books.” Much to my delight, a couple of days after posting about my unexpectedly emotional find of Where I Came From and When I Was Small in my local Target, the author of the books, Sara, read what I had published and commented on the post. She was kind towards my review of her books and through the sharing of contact information on Twitter, a few weeks later, this showed up in our mailbox.

Pretty much the nicest thing the Internet has ever done for me.

Sara had sent the kids a lovely signed postcard.

Henry was excited when I showed the note to him but also exhibited disbelief that an actual author of an actual book he was holding in his actual hands had mailed us her actual autograph. In fact, for a brief moment, he accused ME of writing the postcard which was both hilarious and proves he doesn’t realize how lazy I actually am. Charlie and Millie are too young to really appreciate it but I know someday, when Millie picks up one of The Henry Books to read to herself, she will discover this note and smile just as wide as I did.